Currently, Minnesota cigarette smokers pay $1.23 in taxes and fees on a pack of cigarettes.

State taxes or fees on cigarettes — the state’s first tax, enacted in 1947, was three cents a pack — were last raised in 2005 when Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s controversial 75-cent health care impact fee went into effect.

Pawlenty used the impact fee as a means of resolving a state budget dispute.

Some legislators view the state’s current tobacco tax as inadequate.

“It’s embarrassing that we’re below Wisconsin — we should at least be where Wisconsin is. Probably higher,” said House Tax Committee Chairwoman Ann Lenczewski, DFL-Bloomington.

Wisconsin, with its state tax on a pack of cigarettes at $2.52, is well ahead of Minnesota.

Minnesota’s cigarette tax is also below those in Iowa, Michigan, and South Dakota.

In North Dakota, on the other hand, the tax on a pack of smokes is only 44 cents.

Anti-smoking advocates view the cigarette tax as an effective means of trying to control a perceived blight on society.

Pat McKone, a director with the American Lung Association-Minnesota, said raising the price of a pack of cigarettes “absolutely” would reduce smoking.

It’s a “proven strategy,” McKone said.

Smokers are price sensitive, and raising the cost of pack of cigarettes by $1.50 would result in 36,600 state smokers quitting.

American Lung Association is one of about 40 groups, including the Cancer Society, Mayo Clinic, and others, pushing for a $1.50 per pack increase, McKone said.

Ehlinger agrees that increasing the tobacco tax can reduce the number of smokers.

Studies have “consistently” shown that increasing the price on a pack of cigarettes by 10 percent results in about a four percent overall decrease in smoking, Ehlinger said.

The decrease is more marked among young people, as they tend to have less money, he explained.

While Lenczewski is receptive to increasing the tobacco tax, her counterpart in the Senate is less so.

“I have never been a supporter of taxes that make the tax system more regressive. And those quote, unquote ‘sin taxes’ are very regressive,”
said Senate Tax Committee Chairman Rod Skoe, DFL-Clearbrook.

To the extent that smoking in general is a habit of less educated, lower income people, there is a regressive nature to the tobacco tax, Ehlinger conceded.

“(But) tobacco is a regressive disease,” he said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the likelihood of a person smoking is influenced by educational attainment.

Nationally, while about 45 percent of adults with GEDs smoke, only about 6 percent of adults with a postgraduate college degrees do.

“It is regressive,” Lenczewski said of tobacco taxes.

“On the other hand, it’s kind of voluntary thing where people decide to smoke,” she said.